20Sep13

US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina - secret document

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the
Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to
detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times
more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under
the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US
was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39
hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina
on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in
mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was
designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms
engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons - the equivalent of 4 million tons
of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been
deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New
York city - putting millions of lives at risk.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the
Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied
that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through
safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the
Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear
weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch
stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".

Writing eight years after the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs
that dropped over North Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made
his inaugural address as president, were inadequate in their safety controls
and that the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been
shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst. "It would have been
bad news - in spades," he wrote.

Jones dryly entitled his secret report "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to
Mistrust the H-Bomb" - a quip on Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical film about
nuclear holocaust, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb.

The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having
embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine
flight along the East Coast. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it
was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North
Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted
into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.

Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to
prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the
bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device,
and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The
MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role
in the B-52," Jones concludes.

The document was uncovered by Schlosser as part of his research into his
new book on the nuclear arms race, Command and Control. Using freedom of
information, he discovered that at least 700 "significant" accidents and
incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and
1968 alone.

"The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the
American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear
weapons policy," he said. "We were told there was no possibility of these
weapons accidentally detonating, yet here's one that very nearly did."

[Source: By Ed Pilkington in New York, The Guardian, London, 20Sep13]

This document has been published on 23Sep13 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.